Remember When Women Couldn't Vote? Get Thee to the Polls

Even if you don't care about the issues, women fought hard to gain the right to vote. Let's cast our votes in their honor.

Thanks to an inadequately screened picture book, I was recently put in the unenviable position of explaining the concept of women's suffrage to my three-year-old. "So, boys could say who they wanted for president, but not girls?" she said, slowly, as if talking to a disturbed person. I confirmed, then wished I hadn't said anything. It was too sad, and suddenly hard for me to believe too.

I delivered then what I imagined to be a stirring speech about how exciting and empowering voting was, and what an amazing country we live in, and what an, uh, interestingly structured government we have. Harper flipped ahead to the page in the book about a ballerina.

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I have to admit I sometimes have a similar response to politics — even the sexy partisan squabbling of election season: the distracted glaze-over. But when you think about it, it really is pretty amazing/ridiculous that less than 100 years ago, women actually couldn't vote; that in the past 100 years, women had to fight to be acknowledged as people with brains; and that now, some of us can't be bothered to get ourselves registered for the very right for which our processors fought so hard because we'd have to fill out like five lines of information on this thingy and then mail it. Reminder: In some states you have to register as far as 30 days in advance – and don't forget you need to update your registration if you've moved or changed your name.

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This election day, in a bitterly contested election between two parties with pretty disparate visions for the country, some of us are going to say, "Oh phooey, I don't want to get up early/be late for work/drive out of my way/wait in a line/deal with an 'I voted' sticker, whatever, it doesn't matter anyway, I'll skip it."

Women have a uniquely significant role in the upcoming election. We might as well take advantage of a moment when people are asking our opinions. And come on, it would be so hard to explain to my daughter why some women would choose not to vote.

Amy Shearn is the mother of two small children, and is the proprietress of Household Words, a blog about babies, books, and Brooklyn. She also writes for Oprah.com and MommyPoppins.com. Amy is the author of the novel How Far Is the Ocean From Here (Shaye Areheart/Crown 2008) and a forthcoming novel about, what else, a Brooklyn mother, called The Mermaid of Brooklyn that will be published by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in 2013.